


Pale Kindnesses

by icarus_chained



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Betrayal, Comfort, Dishonored 1, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Mercy - Freeform, Pain, Poisoning, Worship, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 08:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20355229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: “… How small they are,” the god said absently. In that distant, dispassionate voice of his. An idle notation. “How very small, the things that bring us comfort, when all else but pain is lost.”Two boat trips, into death and out of it, and the pale kindnesses of men and gods. The Flooded District and the Lighthouse.





	Pale Kindnesses

**Author's Note:**

> My sister and I started playing this game. It's so bleak. And so lovely.

Water lapped around him. The stink of the river. There was light. Everywhere. A wall of it, when the darkness didn’t drown him. He couldn’t move. His insides knotted. Gnawed at each other. Fire burned through him from head to toe.

Poison, they’d said. A half-dose. Samuel. Doing all he could. Not enough, maybe. In the end.

He couldn’t breathe properly. Blackness washed in and out like the water. He was grateful for it, while it was there. It was a relief from the burning, from the twisting and writhing within him. Pain. Fire. Not like Coldridge. That had been on the surface. Burning inwards. Over and over again. This was inside him. All the way in. Like a knife. Like failure. He’d move away from it if he could. Crawl away. Cringe. He couldn’t manage. Bound in place by his body’s weakness. All over again.

Emily. Emily. _I’m so sorry_.

Time passed. He thought it did. Nothing but the river and the pain. Endless, like the long nights in Coldridge. It was daylight out. Still daylight. Too much time, and not enough. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t just let go. Go to sleep. Slide into the blackness and escape the burning. Something stopped him. Every time the blackness rolled over and away again. Something kept him from sinking. Time stretched, the burning wire coiling tighter and tighter in his guts. It wouldn’t snap. No matter how tight it wound. It wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t grant him any peace.

The boat rocked gently. Something moved beside his head. He felt it, vaguely. From a long way away. He wanted to turn towards it. Wanted to face what came for him. He couldn’t manage. Maybe a finger moved, a thousand miles away. Nothing else. Not anymore.

There was silence, then. Nothing but the water. The blackness rolled in. Rolled away. Whatever sat beside him didn’t move. Didn’t speak. And then …

Something _icy_. On his skin. His forehead. Something firm, and gentle, and cold. Pressing down against the fire inside his veins. His stomach lurched. The shredded remains of it. Agony. Relief. A freezing hand cupped itself negligently at his brow.

He forced his eyes open. Forced himself to let daylight back in. Barely, only barely. He cast them weakly towards the figure at his side.

Black eyes looked dispassionately down at him. Cold. Remote. Idly curious. Such were the expressions of gods. The Outsider tilted his head at him. Smoothed a thumb across his brow. Cold as the Void, numb to all pain and all agony. Where his palm and his fingers passed, for those brief moments, no pain could reach.

It was … mercy. More mercy than anyone had given in a long, long time. 

If he’d had any tears left, Corvo would have wept.

He swallowed instead. Tried to swallow. Tried to speak. It wouldn’t come. Pain coiled and knotted in his throat, that old friend. It swallowed his tongue, shredded his breath. He tried to part his lips, and felt the blood bead from them as they cracked. Only the barest whisper of air passed. Not enough to form a word. Not enough for two. He closed his eyes, and tried to press the thought out through the skin of his brow instead. Tried to press it into the god’s palm, a silent whisper only gods could hear. 

_Thank you_. A numb, distant prayer, blind and agonised. For the relief. For those pale, few moments of relief. _Thank you_.

“… How small they are,” the god said absently. In that distant, dispassionate voice of his. An idle notation. “How very small, the things that bring us comfort, when all else but pain is lost.”

Corvo’s eyes burned. Tears. Dry tears, unable to be shed. The darkness loomed, swam upwards again to tug him close. Tug him down, for a few more moments at a time, before the pain would dig its claws in and haul him upwards again. The god’s hand still rested on his forehead. Some part of him clung to it, the thought of it, as blackness drowned him.

And another, more distant, clung to something else. A thought, a little bit of flotsam that snagged against his consciousness. Just a word, in an idle voice.

_Us_, the Outsider said. How small, the things that bring _us_ comfort. When all else but pain is lost.

The boat wobbled. Nudged against something, some bit of debris in the water. Pain stabbed him, cast him upward. To an empty world. To an empty boat. To the sunlight and the stink of the river. There was no hand on his forehead. There was no pale figure beside his head. Buildings loomed above him instead. A bridge. Figures, far away.

Figures on top of him. Harsh and sudden, blinking into being. Hands on his body, not cool and idle but hard and curious. Familiar, so much more so than what had come before. Voices. Dispassionate still, but rougher. Colder. Noting his identity. Noting his condition. Weighing it casually and dismissively. A nothing. His life, for Daud to decide. Daud. Of course. Of _course_ Daud. Who else could it be? Into what other hands could he have flown? Or drifted, as the case may be. 

What other last betrayal … could have made his day complete?

\---

He did not kill him. Daud. Havelock. Any of them, really. In the end, he didn’t kill them. Nor they him. No death. Maybe no mercy either. Wires that wouldn’t snap. Pain that wouldn’t let go. It wasn’t a mercy, not really. But it was all he had. All any of them could offer. Pale kindnesses, small cruelties. Mixed in together, until no one could tell them apart. He did all he could. He didn’t kill them. He didn’t know if that was enough.

It might have been more, though, than anyone had given in a long time.

They’d sounded like it was. Daud, kneeling in his own blood. And the Outsider, strange and gleeful, staring at him. Both of them incredulous, dispassion and exhaustion strained over disbelief.

_And you choose mercy. Extraordinary._

_You had him in the palm of your hand, and you let him walk away? You fascinate me._

He wondered distantly if they knew how similar they’d sounded. How almost exactly the same. If it would impress them, or distress them, or matter at all.

It probably wasn’t his business, either way. He had … other concerns.

He’d felt something crumble, when he lowered his sword and let Daud go. Again later, when Havelock fell under a sleep dart, and somehow did not stop breathing. He’d felt something stretch and tear in his chest. It didn’t hurt, oddly. It wasn’t pain. Something else.

And then … Emily. In his arms. _Safe_. Crying and shaking and _safe_. She’d seen such things. _Heard_ such things. Havelock, in blind self-pity, spilling all his sins. Telling her. Using her, using a _child_, to try and salve them. There was a part of Corvo that hated the man for that. More than anything else. More than poison, more than betrayal. To have used her. To have hurt her and betrayed her and then _used_ her. For that. He could feel it shaking in his chest. Hammering to get out, the Heart pounding alongside his in mute anguish. Mute rage. 

But it didn’t matter. In the end. _Nothing_, nothing on the earth or the sea or the Void, mattered more than Emily in his arms. Nothing mattered more than her being safe. He would fix what he could. Salve what he could. Heal what he could. A thousand pale kindnesses, spread out across the Void. So long as she lived, so long as she was safe. It was all that mattered.

“Can we go now?” she whispered. Into his neck, his throat, hot and damp from her tears. Her arms tight around him. “Corvo. Can we go?”

He nodded. Still mute, his tongue still swallowed in his throat. By relief, this time. Not pain. A blind, shaking wall of relief. That she wasn’t dead. That she wasn’t lying like Jessamine in front of him, pleading with her last breath. That they hadn’t killed her. That he’d finally been in time.

He scooped her up as he stood. Carried her with him. He couldn’t let her go. For no force on this earth would he ever again let her go. She didn’t complain. Her arms wound tighter. She curled her small fists in his coat, and held on only tighter.

Havelock had told her they’d killed him. Havelock had _told her_. So much done, to him and to her and to Jess, and somehow it was that that he could least forgive. That the Admiral have given her that pain, used her to salvage himself, and made her _live_ with it. 

His hand had spasmed around the crossbow. More than Daud. More than _anyone_. It had taken everything he had to use the bolt and not the sword.

But it didn’t matter now.

Samuel came when he called. Still doing everything he could. Still faithful, still loyal. Old sailors, better than all the protectors and admirals in the world.

Corvo lay back in the boat. Emily asleep in his arms. The water lapped around him. Daylight. The cleaner smell of the sea. He leaned back and let them drown him, Emily secure at his side.

When the boat rocked gently, he wasn’t surprised.

“It’s been such an interesting journey, Corvo,” said the god. Perched beside him, looking down at him with black, whale eyes. Curiosity. Idle dispassion. “What a fascinating creature you’ve been.”

Corvo smiled at him. Wetly. Painfully. Something crumbling inside his chest. Not pain. Still not pain. The god tilted his head. Nonplussed.

He held … he held out his hand. Mutely. A question, a reaching. He had to. He lifted his marked hand, the arm not wrapped around Emily, and held it out to his god.

The Outsider … went still. Not froze, nothing so marked, but stilled. His attention sharpened. All the weight of the Void. The sea stilled around them. The waves went quiet. The engine. Samuel. All of it went away. A darkness swam upwards, ready to tug them all down. Slowly, without ever taking his eyes from Corvo’s, the Outsider reached out his hand in turn.

It was icy. Just as it had been on his forehead, a pale relief against poison. It was firm, and gentle, and cold. Corvo curled his fingers around it. Clutched it, a small thing against the darkness, and brought it carefully to his lips.

They weren’t cracked now. They didn’t weep drops of blood onto icy fingers. Salt, yes, but not blood. The kiss lasted but a bare moment. He’d never meant one more.

“_Thank you_,” he whispered. A wet rasp from a ravaged throat, but free now. Not swallowed, not trapped behind his tongue. The first free words in … in a long time. Such a very long time. Said to the wind and the sea and the world. No more silent prayers to empty gods. But he pressed it to the Outsider’s hand still. He pressed it to the god’s palm. No other but him. Tears slid gently down his cheeks, no longer trapped behind burning eyes. “_Thank you_.”

The Outsider … did not answer. Did not move. For a moment without end. An endless eternity.

Then black eyes slid slowly, carefully sideways. Away from Corvo, from his face, his tears, his blind gratitude. The Outsider looked away from him … and down to Emily.

He raised a hand. The other one, the one not caught and held in Corvo’s own. He lifted his hand and slowly, gently, rested it on her head. Her hot brow, above her tearstained cheeks, still pressed into Corvo’s chest. She stirred slightly to the touch. To the faint relief of a cool palm on burning skin.

“… She will rest without fear,” the Outsider said. Carefully. Almost hesitantly. A strangeness in his black eyes, not quite like fear. “Until she wakes again, she will rest without fear. A lullaby of whalesong. No poisons of men will touch her.”

The thing in Corvo’s chest gave way. At last. Completely. It ripped through, and the sobs shuddered blindly up his throat. Ragged. Appalling. No longer swallowed down. It tore out of him, a year’s worth of agony and relief, and he curled himself close around Emily. Wrapped himself desperately around the person he loved most in all the world, and clung to the Outsider’s hand.

The sound of the sea rushed back in. The daylight, the waves. The sound of Samuel at the tiller, turning away, doing everything he could to be kind. The world shifted and moved. But the god did not vanish. A pale hand did not slip away. It held tight, silent prayers still pressed between the skin, and stayed until long after the shore was in sight.

How small they were. How very, very small, the things that gave us comfort in the dark.

How needful, and powerful, and right.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Pale Kindnesses [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21162773) by [KD reads (KDHeart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDHeart/pseuds/KD%20reads)


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